Using Popshops for Affiliate Marketing Product Tables: Service Review

Affiliate Marketing can be done in many different ways, but one of those is the display of products as a catalog or in an article or post. One service available for making affiliate marketing  product tables is called Popshops. I've used their service and currently have a Pro account which is one step up from their free trial version. I had an enterprise account for a while, but I later decided that current limitations weren't worth the difference in price. Here are some notes, basically a review, of Popshops to help you decide if it is right for you.

Popshops is faster than making a table manually in HTML

It is a time intensive process but using Popshops for handpicked product tables is much faster than making tables yourself.  You save time because it has a very nice graphic interface you can browse a merchant in the left sidebar or do a search for a keyword. When you want to add a product to a "shop" aka product table, you have to click a button, so this is only practical for handpicked products, not for adding hundreds or thousands or products. You'll click finger will go numb and your eyes will glaze over after a few hundred.

You get to set up basic table layout.

With Popshops, you can set the number of columns to display, their widths, product image width, spacing, font, number of characters in the description, and font size. They've recently added a "buy now" button.

Autofeed and automatic replacing of unavailable products is lacking

Popshops autoupdating features are still needing to be improved, their autogenerated results for related products normally show very unrelated products (at least in my experience ie baby clothes and women's tops on a table for men's swimsuits and china cabinets on pages for children's furniture) fortunately you don't have to turn on that feature. so if you are deciding between handpicked product tables using copy/paste and Popshops, go with Popshops, you'll be happy.

Wordpress Plugin

They have a wordpress plugin that allows you to add a shop to the end of a post when it is displayed by Wordpress or easily add the HTML of a product to a Post.

Account Upgrades

They offer different subscription plans starting at $5/month (as of writing this article). If you want RSS (limited to the number of products in a shop), you'll need an enterprise account which is much more expensive.  I wanted to go beyond that limitation, so I ended up writing my own RSS script in PHP. I don't blame them for that. Popshops wasn't designed for RSS, they just added it as another way to display a product table.  They're working on premium services for coupon feeds.

Summary

I found that while "shop" or product table creation was fast and easy, especially with their Wordpress Plugin for adding a shop to a post, keeping shop tables updated is a major chore once you have a few hundred shops in your account.   To be fair they do have a page to show you click tracking and shops with unavailable products. I only wish there was a way to set up keywords and negative or exclusion keywords so the autogenerated products and replacement products would actually be related.

Popshops wasn't and isn't designed to show many products or a catalog or even a category of products from a merchant or a group of merchants so if you are looking to do so you'll probably be happier with webmerge if you want HTML or writing your own PHP script if you want dyamic lists of an entire product category or product catalog. Of course, there is nothing stopping you from doing both or all three.

Am I happy with Popshops? Yes, I am. I am just a bit picky and my needs have grown since I started using it.  Since my newer needs weren't being met, I had to learn PHP and start writing my own product display scripts.  Hopefully they'll address some of the areas that need improvement in the coming years and I'll be able to use it more.

Home Office Preparation and Review - Get Tools

Hopefully, you've already gotten organized using the previous post, but what about the tools you use every day as an online business and/or home office?  Much will depend on what you do, but here are some ideas for you to ponder. I'm sure you'll be able to think of more and better ideas.

Get tools

Get a computer

The most important and useful tool of course is your computer and peripherals. You'll use it to get online, check and send e-mail messages, record basic data and design you websites and do your online marketing. Perhaps you give online courses or chat support to your clients and website visitors too.

If you do a lot of moving around you might want a "desktop replacement" portable computer. Some people still call them laptops. Otherwise you'll get a better and more upgradeable computer getting a midtower system. Most computer desks seem to be designed for tower systems, so they'll have a place to put that cabinet.

Get peripherals

You'll need a basic printer for printing receipts, online invoices (if your country allows that), and bank statements (for your accountant).  Paperless offices really don't exist, but we're getting closer.  It just won't happen until the tax man and the accountant can keep everything electronically.

Get Input devices

Obviously you'll need a keyboard and mouse. You may not have thought about the need for a graphic drawing tablets. A drawing tablet is great if you do any graphic design work or if you sell products like prints and t-shirts using your art and photography. Painters will need a scanner.

Get a digital camera

On that same thought you'll want to get a digital camera if you do your own webdesign or if you want original art for your webmaster to use. For web only images a good 3 or 4 megapixel camera is fine. Those are getting cheap too.  Digital artists who need images for print need at least 10 megapixels. I just barely get by with my 10 megapixel camera.  It isn't enough though for the largest of prints, but it is enough for everything else.  I can't do much image cropping without severely limiting the print size a visitor can buy.

Get essential software

For any kind of basic wordprocessing and spreadsheet work, just download a free copy of OpenOffice. I believe that is at openoffice.org. If not just do a search online.

For website design, it depends on your needs and level. Many power users love Dreamweaver. The only problem with Dreamweaver is that it doesn't multitask well. If I'm uploading files via FTP, I can't switch to work on another website or change to the online view of files. That can be very annoying.  Other that that it is great.

Digital image work means you'll want a copy of Photoshop.  No, Paint will NOT do what you want to do.  There are some cheaper programs out their that have some limited functionality to edit images, but it might take a couple to do everything you want.

Firefox or Safari will be fine for daily web-browsing. Both are free and run better than Internet Explorer. You'll still want to check your website in Internet Explorer as its method for displaying HTML is not standards compliant and it will often make webpages very ugly and sometimes unreadable.

Organize your Home Office - Get Organized

I'm sure many readers are in the first year or two of their home business and perhaps many of you are still using your online business as a second income. During a slow economy it is probably for the best to have multiple income sources, but that shouldn't keep you from getting organizes and preparing a decent work environment.  Even online businesses still have to be run from somewhere and they still have papers and paperwork to deal with.

Get organized

Get a file cabinet

I remember starting out getting a portable hanging folder organizer with 10 folders at Office Depot. I really go crazy in an office supply store because there are so many things I want to get, but it isn't easy on a budget especially starting out.

In this case, I think it is important to first get organized, so any paperwork (yes, you will have paperwork) is organized and ready for accounting and taxes. Whether you prepare your taxes quarterly like in the United States or monthly like here in Mexico, you must prepare.

I don't think there is a bigger time-waster than the hours people spend trying to find bank account statements, invoices, incorporation papers, etc. So really put a file cabinet at the top of your shopping list.  A nice four drawer file cabinet might sound like overkill, but you'll eventually need another cabinet and a vertical 4 drawer version uses less space.

Get hanging folders

Along with that cabinet get hanging folders. I remember when my mom got me a small one as a teenager, but without hanging folders just the plain ones. Needless to say, I just kept junk in it. I think it would have been much different if I actually had folders made for it.

Don't forget to organize your filing cabinet.  For example you could have a drawer for personal papers, one for general business and use the other two for needs specific to what you do. It is great to keep one for print outs like reference sheets. Teachers could use a drawer for worksheets and off-line backups of reports and grades.

Get basic organizers

To help out even more, get some basic supplies like a good stapler, staples, and clips for organizing stuff that go into those folders.  That will save time when a folder gets full and you want to find a specific multi-page document.

Get a book case or a storage unit

Bookshelves or racks of some kind are really essential to any long term home office even for online businesses.  You might want to store some information in binders which need to be kept somewhere. You'll have a few print books perhaps about a programming language you're learning, about tax laws, office supply catalogs, and well if you like to blog, you'll probably have some reference book  about your blog's topic.

Get Baskets

If you don't have many books, a wider unit with spaces for baskets might work well for you. This might work well for people who review gadgets and home electronics or even drop-shippers who work with small quantities (think E-bay resellers).  People who sell crafts need to store parts and supplies.  Perhaps many people would find a combination of the two the best choice as long as the space is available. A basket or tray would also be great for your desk for keeping stuff that you like to have available and within reach. A basket is also great because you can easily store it when people come over.

Get magazine holders

If you subscribe to any magazines, get some magazine holders. Each can hold several depending on the thickness of your magazines and keep them in good condition. Your typical magazine rack is only good for reading and throwing them away. Magazine holders are great for storing magazines securely and then can be placed on a shelf.  Keep your reference material safe!

Get a bulletin board

You may or may not need one, but they are very useful if you have the space. Bulletin boards are great places to keep anything you need for quick reference like keyboard short cuts and your to-do list. Use a bulletin board for sharing notes with your coworkers, roommates, or family members. Just remember to not post anything you don't want visitors to see.

Do you really need it? Cut Expenses for a Healthy Budget

Reduce Spending When the Economy Slows

Times are getting tough again. Every day I read dire news on the internet about the sky falling... or is that the stock market.  We all know that economies have cycles of growth and decline and it appears we aren't growing at the moment, so it is time to review your budget.

You do have a budget, right? This post is both for individuals as well as online businesses.  Hopefully up to now, you've made enough money to pay all your bills and save about 40 for emergencies, gifts, and entertainment.  If you have, you probably have enough savings to be safe until the economy recovers.

On the other hand, you may have found your online sales and marketing efforts declining and your savings have been disappearing, so it is time to cut back on spending.

Go through you list of both fixed and variable expenses and decide if they are essential or not. Mark the non-essential expenses with a check mark (tick for British folk :-) ).

For each checked item, determine whether you can replace it with something cheaper or do without.

Here are some examples:

• Suspend or cancel the second phone line.


• Cancel optional services like CallerID. Those can really add up.


• Move to a smaller office or have a home office instead of renting. A home office might require a little redecorating, but it would probably cost less than 2 month's office rent and from then on, you'll be saving.


• Move to a smaller apartment or look into buying if the monthly payments would be cheaper than your current rent.


• Rent your house or apartment's spare bedroom out.


• Cancel your cable or satellite television or at least cut back to the basic plan.


• Reduce your Internet plan to a cheaper one. Here, I pay a different rate according to the bandwidth I select.


• Check your heating and cooling expenses. Change your thermostat so that your heater or air conditioning run less. Run a fan by your desk on hot days.


• Disconnect appliances and electronics that you are not currently using. Many have a standby mode that continues to use electricity.


• Open your curtains and blinds during the day. Turn off lights that you are not currently using.


• Be sure to deduct valid business expenses from your business's taxes.


• Go to the public library instead of the shopping center.  Many purchases are impulsive. Look for something when you decide you need it.


• Pay with cash or check instead of credit. Studies show people spend more when they use credit cards.

I'm sure you can think of many more ways to cut back until your online marketing and sales improve. You might find that many of these changes will help you and your online business save money later on.

Recover Your Online Websites Quickly with Backups

Frequent backups the necessary "evil" for your online business website

I know, it is something we hate to do in real life with our computers.  I know this because every so often you'll read in a forum something like "my harddrive crashed and I lost everything!".  How often have you read "My website was hacked so I had to start over with an empty site?".

Although we hate backing up our websites as much as our computers, doing so will save you much heartache as well as time.

Backing up HTML only sites

If you have a simple HTML only website then your backup is very simple, just download everything in your webhost's directory and save it to a CD, DVD, USB drive, etc.  In reality, you should already have all the files on your computer which you've been uploading via FTP, so you could just save the off line version.

Backing up dynamic sites that use databases

Backing up a dynamic site, for example one with PHP pages and a MySql database, takes just a little more work.  In this case, you should still save the contents of your webhosting directory (which you should already have a copy of on your computer as a best practice).  You will also need to export the contents of your database.  If you have a MySql database, just go to your webhost's control panel and find PHPmyadmin. It is usually on the main page, but some hosts make it a link inside a "database" page. Once there, it is just a matter of selecting your database from the menu and the the "export" tab.  You'll want to select gzip so it will be compressed and save downloading time. Don't worry, you won't have to uncompress it to later import the backup if the need arises.  If your website uses more than one database then just repeat the process with the other databases.

Reuploading your website after being hacked or server error

If your site gets hacked or files get damaged by routine server tasks, you'll have your back up ready and you'll be running like normal as soon as everything is uploaded back to the server.

Uploading HTML sites

Uploading HTML sites is very easy just upload all the files by FTP back to your webhosting directory. If a page doesn't load, upload it again.

Uploading dynamic sites

First upload the backup of your webhosting directory via FTP.  If your databases were damaged or hacked, go to PHPmyadmin, select a database delete its contents then go to the "import" tab and import your backup. If you get errors, first try uploading your directory backup. Often those are caused from a file being skipped when uploading by FTP.

Don't just upload your backups

Obviously you should do more than just upload files. You should try to figure out what was hacked. It is possible that your database wasn't hacked at all and all you'll need to do is upload your files.

You'll also want to check your web hosting directory for files that don't belong there and delete them before you upload your backup.

Share your thoughts

Have you been hacked? What backup and recovery tips can you share?  Tell us in the forum.

Social Features: Keep in Touch with Website Visitors

How social is your online business?

If you are like most companies, probably not very.  I've been helping one of my friends who has a medium-sized traditional service based company.  He's been relying on old fashioned methods until just recently. He's making great improvements to expand into new technologies and so can you.

Most old fashioned businesses think of a website as just a static information page to say what they do, where they are, and a contact form.  In reality, it can be that and much more.

Your website should become an opportunity for two way communication.  Another friend with a very successful site, actually uses the community he formed as the major focus of his website.  The transition from a traditional site to a community isn't easy, but with some planning and effort you'll get there eventually.

Let visitors comment on your posts and articles

I was so frustrated with spam that I had disabled comments on most of my sites, but you might have better luck.   You can try requiring registration and use spam filters and CAPTCHAs and see if that helps reduce spam to a comfortable level.

Let visitors blog

Some may want to write about the same topic as your site, so let them blog if you don't mind checking for spammer blog registrations.

Let visitors discuss issues in a forum

A forum provides an opportunity for visitors to discuss the issues you mention in your posts and articles.  The difficulty here is to get it started because no one wants to be the first. On the other hand, forums seem to be easier to sustain once they get going.

Offer Chat discussions

A chat room is fun, but unless you have a high volume website, most people will complain that no one is there even if many people join. This is human nature. Everyone wants to join and find people there. No one wants to join and actually wait (not even a few minutes) for others to show up.

Offer Chat support

If you have national and international customers and clients, online chat support will be very helpful. They can avoid long distance and international call charges and get the help they need in a way that is more dynamic than e-mail.

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What to Do When Traffic to Your Online Business drops

You may find that everything has been going well for your business. Google and the other search engines have been sending you traffic and you've been making money selling or referring products or though advertising.

Then one day, it happens, Google changed their algorithm and your flow of traffic has become a trickle and you're making a fraction of what you were before.

What are you doing to compensate for when this happens to you?

Possible solutions

Send people to your landing pages with PPC campaigns

Start PPC campaigns to send people to your landing pages. While I abhor this option many people go this route.  PPC, or Pay Per Click advertising, is where you place advertising on other sites. When someone clicks on the advertisement, they're taken to your "landing" or presales page and you pay a fee for that click which is usually between a couple cents and a dollar depending on the keyword and the advertising network used.

I don't recommend this option because this is very intensive and it requires plenty of work to have a positive ROI (return on investment).

Write articles for Article sites, Squidoo, Hubpages, related blogs, etc.

A good writer could get quality traffic to his or her website by writing articles and submitting them to the most popular article sites.  Some visitors to the e-zine sites would click on your website link in the article or in the author credit.   The few website authors who use those articles and include your link as required would also give you good backlinks which search engines often consider when determining search engine result page placement.  Squidoo, Hubpages and Blogger (Blogspot) also allow you to make some money through ad revenue share. Write guest blog posts or guest articles for other websites that are related to your own.
All the extra backlinks from quality websites should improve your rankings and increase traffic.

E-mail past visitors

If you don't have a list of visitor e-mail addresses, it is time to start one! If you sell products you can ask for the e-mail address when you get shipping information. If you have an informational or affiliate site, start a newsletter.    While it is tempting to spam people with your list (I just got a spam this morning from an ex-employer), it is much better and if you live in the USA, more legal to only send e-mails to those visitors who have given you approval to do so.  A simple checkbox allowing e-mails will work for most merchants. The rest of us can have sign up forms.  To be extra safe, you should validate any submitted e-mail addresses with a confirmation e-mail which requires a click.  This is called double-opt-in.  They opted in when they gave permission and the opt-in was doubled when they clicked on the link.  That is also nice because you get rid of mistyped e-mail addresses with this process. The bad side is that many people will never activate their subscription.

Social bookmarking

Make sure visitors have a way to easily add your articles to social bookmarking websites.

Make your website stickier

Give your visitors a reason to come back, by adding social features, regular new content, and fun activities like contests (with prizes).

Start a Blog and make constructive comments on related blogs

Start a blog related to your business and share links to your blog posts on Twitter and on your Facebook Page. Link to your main website in the blog. Interact with those who leave comments on the Blog and your contact form.

Add an XML Google Sitemap to Your Online Business

Keep Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other Search Engines informed with an XML Sitemap

If you are like me, you wonder what's with Google. Google seems to find blog posts with out much trouble, but when it comes to other pages, it seems to just ignore them and let them languish.  If Wordpress is only a small section of your website, then a sitemap becomes an essential tool for informing Google and other search engines that your pages exist and should be indexed.

Google will index your content sometime before the cows come home

While Google's bots will eventually find any content on your website linked by other pages, you'll find that Google will not quickly index non-blog content especially without a Sitemap.

You can find information on the structure and coding for an XML Sitemap which works for Google at http://www.sitemaps.org/

Consider an XML Sitemap written in PHP using your database

You can write your sitemap file with .php extension as long as the Sitemap content uses XML as shown. Making a script to create your Sitemap is a good idea because as your website grows, it will become harder and harder to keep a manually updated sitemap current. Basically you query your database's posts and articles and then echo that information in XML.  What? Your website is just plain HTML pages?  You could probably use a script that spiders your site and makes an XML file, but you'd have to run it frequently.

A Sitemap script that is the same file that Google fetches is the best choice because it would be current everytime the search engine requests it.

Consider an online XML Sitemap creator

A third option would be to use a free Sitemap spider service online. They will spider up to 500 pages as they are found from the homepage of your website.  This, like other "spider" script sitemap creators, has the weakness of just adding what they find which could easily be duplicate content due to variables and search options and other URL issues that will also give you sitemap errors and warnings.

Avoid duplicate content

When creating an XML Sitemap remember that you don't want to include duplicate content, so if there is more than one path to a specific post, article, or product on your website, just include the best path where the content is going to be found more long term.

Consider making a Sitemap Index

you'll also find on the above mentioned site, information regarding the creation of a Sitemap Index. The Sitemap Index is also XML (but you can have a php script make it). You can submit the Sitemap Index file to Google Webmasters Tools as your Sitemap and Google will then check every sitemap listed inside that file.

There are a couple great benefits to using a Sitemap Index. First, you can make modular simpler Sitemap files and list them or not as needed. Second, you only have to submit one Sitemap file per site.

There is a limit to the size of a sitemap index as well as the number of links, so even if you have a small website now, it wouldn't hurt to start off with two files, your Sitemap Index which you'll submit to the search engines and your actual sitemap file.  It will only take a couple minutes more to start off right, and you'll save plenty of time you'd have lost later submitting separate files to each search engine.

Ready for the next step, add your Sitemap to your Robots.txt file

While you should submit your Sitemap or Sitemap Index to Google, Yahoo, and other search engines, consider also including it in your robots.txt file.  It is very simple. Just add:

Sitemap: http://yoursite.tld/sitemapfilename.xml

If your website is mywebsite.com and your sitemap index is   sitemap.xml then you'd add:

Sitemap: http://mywebsite.com/sitemap.xml

Unfortunately you cannot use relative URLs, so you can't just say /sitemap.xml

I really wish they'd allow relative URLs for those of us with multiple websites, but I guess they just didn't think that far ahead.

Website Automation is Important

Are you Automating your content and site upkeep?

While there are so many things that must be taken care of with an online business, Internet based businesses need to analyze their processes and procedures to see what can be taken care of in a more efficient and/or automatic manner.

It really doesn't matter what kind of business you have. Whether you are a blogger or a merchant selling tangible goods or perhaps you're somewhere in between like a blogger, you need to see where you can improve.  An investment of a week or two now could save you much more time in the coming months or years.

Check for repetition

If you're like me you probably don't know where to start and you probably started your web site as a hobby or as a supplement to your regular brick-n-mortar physical store.  That's ok, just start with where you are at now.  Ask yourself what tasks have to be done regularly. It might be a good idea to make a list of activities that you have to do every day, every week, and every month.

See which activities are very repetitive. Those activities are good candidates for automation.

Automation Examples

Consider using a CMS

Are you writing your web pages in plain HTML and copy/pasting product information in?  Parts of your website creation process can be automated. You could save the time spent on adding HTML, page layout, and menus, by installing a CMS such as Wordpress, Drupal, or Joomla or a forum like bbpress, or Simple Machines Forum.  By installing a CMS or Forum on your website, you preset the design and categories, and entries get added to menus. You'd just work on adding the content to entries such as blog posts or forum threads.

Automate your product displays

If you are an affiliate marketer or a merchant, you'll want to look into automating your display of products using a database.  In affiliate marketing, many merchants make datafeeds available which are electronic spreadsheets with a list of available products and other relevant information.  Affiliates can use PHP and MySQL to integrate those datafeeds into dynamic pages that visitors can browse or search.

HTML Make-a-Page creators are a short-term solution

While some affiliate networks offer HTML page creation with code ready to copy/paste into a website or blog entry, that static page information will soon become out-of-date and will require updating.

Don't rely on static HTML pages

I had made the mistake of relying too much on static and other difficult-to-update displays on my sites and found myself caught between spending half my time updating existing pages or creating new content. It was very frustrating because it worked, but I didn't know how to progress. I was so busy updating product information that I didn't have time to write original content!

Learn PHP and MySQL or hire a programmer

In this case you'll most likely want to hire a programmer or learn PHP and MySQL yourself.  I know it sounds complicated, and yes, PHP is a programming language unlike HTML which is just simple coding, but once you finish your first couple scripts, you'll find that it isn't too difficult with a little planning and patience.  If you are an affiliate marketer you'll need at least a couple scripts. You'll need one to import datafeeds into your MySQL database and another for displaying products. You can then expand your ability by allowing user search or by displaying products by keyword, category, or really any other feature you can think of.

Automate your XML Sitemap

Another great option for automation is your XML Sitemap, also called your Google Sitemap.  You can write your Sitemap in PHP and submit your php script to Google Webmasters.  If you have dynamic content this is crucial otherwise you'd have to do it manually!  That could take weeks for a large website.

If you have a small website, you might not think it matters, but what about when your site is larger in a year or two? Your Sitemap was easy to update manually when you had only 30 pages, but it won't be so easy-to-update when it has 200.  If you later delete a page from your site, you'll have to look through 200 pages to find it while a well written sitemap script will include all pages that currently exist.

Standardize your website design

If you have multiple websites, consider what goes into maintaining and updating them.  Are you customizing each site, or are you making different aspects modular?  If you need to update your CMS or your custom scripts, could you copy the files over to the other site and have them just work?   By standardizing things like page width, and locations where your scripts and software are installed, updating could just be a matter of uploading everything to the same place on each site.   There are tricks you can do in PHP that let you get the IP address and website name which you might need in the script, so instead of having to open and configure your configuration file, you could tell your script to look up the domain and IP it is running on and do different things based on that information.   By autoconfiguring your scripts, you'll save plenty of time when you need to upgrade. I only wish CMS designers would do the same thing!

Servers are good workers

Servers once set up and running can save you plenty of time once everything is set up. Servers don't get tired, sick, or bored. They don't limit themselves to business hours either. Any activity that you can give them is going to be much cheaper than paying someone or spending the time to a task by yourself. Even with shared hosting, you just go to your webserver's control panel and add a "Cron job". Cron jobs just tell a server to run a script using the frequency that you set. So if you want it to run a backup, or a datafeed import at 2:00 am, just set it up. If you can write or pay for a script to do a task, you can later set it up as a Cron job, your script will run, and the task will be done, rain or shine, or even when you're on vacation!